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PayPal Holdings Inc.’s chief executive laid out a unified commerce strategy early Tuesday for both online and in-store merchants that includes a new application programming interface and a link with Verifone Inc., a major provider of in-store payment devices.
“This is a new PayPal. We are transforming from a payments company into a commerce platform,” said chief executive Alex Chriss in addressing the audience for his company’s investor-day presentation in New York City. “We see an opportunity to revolutionize commerce.”
The new commerce API, which is under construction, follows on a strategy to spur profitable growth for the company, Chriss said, and is being built leveraging artificial intelligence and using PayPal’s vast store of consumer and merchant data. “We are starting to build the platform. We’re moving very quickly,” he said. The development phase, he added, includes input from merchants PayPal has worked with.
In-store, the new approach would enable merchants to identify shoppers, let them know what the shoppers are looking for, enable a discount on items, and speed checkout through a loyalty card that “shows up in [the shopper’s] digital wallet,” Chriss said. For online sellers, “we think we can take the data we have to create a better experience,” he said, through interactions with a merchant better informed about the shopper’s aims. “When I check out, they already know I’m an Amazon Prime member,” he said by way of example. “The end-to-end experience is already built in.”
The key, Chriss said, is improved information flow. “In store, right now, there’s no engagement,” he said. Through the commerce API, “we think we can engage with the merchant, let them know who you are,” recommend products, and offer incentives, Chriss said. The advantage for shoppers is the ability to pay with their preferred media, he said. For merchants, “we help drive the right customer at the right [return on investment], in-store or online,” he added.
Chriss was not specific about when the commerce platform will become widely available, beyond repeating that the company is moving to expedite the project.
The connection with Verifone, long a major provider of in-store point-of-sale devices and related technology, is a key part of the omnichannel strategy, PayPal said, as it undergirds the company’s thrust in in-person payments. The new initiative, aimed at so-called enterprise merchants, relies on PayPal’s Braintree processing platform and is part of PayPal Open, a payments platform expected to launch in the U.S. market “soon,” PayPal says.
“This partnership marks a major shift in how PayPal is approaching the omnichannel enterprise opportunity,” said Chriss in a statement. “In collaboration with Verifone, we are unlocking a new path to mass adoption of in-person payments, which will allow us to scale quickly and bring the full power of PayPal to the global merchant community.”
Verifone in January unveiled a new line of POS devices that feature mobile POS and biometric authentication. Founded in 1981, Verifone was acquired by Francisco Partners in 2018.
